After his extradition to the US from Mexico, drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera pleaded not guilty to a 17-count indictment.
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In this Jan. 8, 2016 file photo released by Mexico's federal government, Mexico's drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman stands for his prison mug shot with the inmate number 3870 at the Altiplano maximum security federal prison in Almoloya, Mexico. Guzman was extradited to the U.S. on Jan. 19, 2017.(Photo: AP)

NEW YORK – A former top lieutenant to Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán told a jury he feared testifying against the accused Mexican drug lord because he believed his ex-boss tried to have him killed in stabbing and grenade attacks.

Miguel Ángel Martínez held a federal courtroom transfixed Thursday as he recounted attacks he said took place in 1998, when he was in Mexican jails fighting efforts to extradite him to the United States for trial on drug trafficking charges.

The testimony from the man who described himself as Guzmán's order-taker appeared aimed at linking Guzmán with a murder conspiracy. Guzmán, accused of leading Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, is also charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes.

Guzmán, 61, is accused of shipping billions of dollars in cocaine, heroin and marijuana into the United States. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Guzmán, who twice escaped from Mexican jails, is being held under tight security during the trial in Brooklyn. The names of the jurors have been kept secret, and they have been escorted to and from court sessions by U.S. marshals.

The jurors seemed to follow Martínez's account intensely as he described troubling omens before the attacks: A spat with one of Guzmán's former wives and an eerie performance by a band outside a Mexican prison.

A defense attorney for Guzmán might have scored points with jury by highlighting discrepancies in the dramatic testimony and prodding Martinez to acknowledge that he hates his former boss for the attacks.

In a precautionary move aimed at thwarting any new attacks, federal prosecutors this week won a court order that barred courtroom sketch artists from depicting Martínez's face or bald head in their drawings.

Martínez has been under federal government protection for 18 years, since he pleaded guilty to drug charges and agreed to become a cooperating witness in the U.S. battle against illegal drugs.

Martínez said he and Guzmán initially maintained a close boss-lieutenant relationship after he was arrested in Mexico and launched his extradition fight.

Even while behind bars, Martínez said, he looked out for the interests of his former boss and the accused cartel leader's family while Guzmán, too, was held in a Mexican jail (Guzmán escaped).

He told the jury he didn't want to testify against the accused drug lord.

"I never mentioned Mr. Guzmán then," Martínez said. "I never stole from him. I never betrayed him. I watched over his family.

"The only thing I received from him was four attack attempts against me."

Martínez and Guzmán, seated on opposite sides of the Brooklyn federal courthouse appeared to look silently at one another after the testimony.

Martínez said the first attack took place shortly after he told one of Guzmàn's former wives that she and the couple's children would have to vacate the house in which they were living while Guzmán was in jail.

The house was held under the name of Martínez's wife, and he needed to sell it to raise money for defense lawyers, Martínez explained.

Attorneys for Guzmán visited him in jail afterward, and Martínez said he willingly signed over ownership papers of properties that were controlled by him but owned by the boss.

Martínez said three men stabbed him in the torso seven times, puncturing his lung and intestines, and one tried to beat him with during a struggle inside his jail cell.

"I was sent to the (jail) hospital, dying," he said.

This file photo shows federal authorities escorting alleged Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, center, from a plane to a waiting caravan of government SUVs after he was extradited to the U.S. to stand trial on drug conspiracy charges.(Photo: U.S. federal law enforcement via AP)

Martinez recovered after surgery, and said he was sent back to the same cell in the jail "with the same people who had just stabbed me."

There came another attack, he said. This time, Martínez testified, jail attackers stabbed him five or six times, puncturing a lung and his pancreas.

Again, he recovered. Martínez was transferred to another jail in Mexico City.

The move, he said, didn't stop a third attack.

At the new jail, Martínez said, prisoners yelled questions about his shoe size, because they knew "I was already dead." They wanted the footwear when jailhouse intuition became reality, he explained.

Martínez said he was out of his cell and making a phone call when he was attacked. This time, two inmates approached and stabbed him multiple times in the face.

Once again, Martínez recovered.

Jurors watched as photos of the scars from the injuries were shown on courtroom video screens.

Martínez said Mexican authorities transferred him to an isolation area in the jail where he was watched over by a guard for protection.

But even that precaution wasn't enough.

One night, Martínez said, he heard a band playing outside the jail walls, playing the same song over and over.

It was a Mexican corrido, a story song, that advised the listener "to live your life intensely, because the only thing you take with you is a bunch of soil."

The next morning, a new attacker struck, this time with a pistol and two grenades that had been stashed inside the jail, Martínez said.

The man tried to force the guard to unlock the cell door, Martínez said. The struggle raised alarms inside the jail and brought the sound of a helicopter in the sky above the facility, Martínez said.

The attacker then tossed the grenades inside the cell, he testified.

The grenade tossing prompted the guard to move away, he said. Martínez told jurors he sought safety by retreating behind bathroom fixtures in the jail cell. Both men survived the grenade explosions unharmed, he said.

During cross-examination, Purpura tried to raise doubts in jurors' minds about Martínez's credibility.

The witness, who had admitted in previous testimony that he once had a four-gram-a-day cocaine habit, insisted that his memory was not impaired.

But Martínez acknowledged he did not have a record of the grenade attack. He also said he did not know whether Mexican media organizations produced news stories about the attack.

Purpura showed jurors that Martinez had previously given sworn testimony saying he had been the victim of a different number of stabbing attacks with a different number of wounds.

"I'm not suggesting you were not stabbed," Purpura said.

Prosecutors have used Martínez as a key witness in the trial. In testimony that began Monday, he said Guzmán was his former boss, and linked him to tons of illegal narcotics shipped into the United States and millions of dollars in bribes for police protection.

Martínez testified that Guzmán negotiated an ownership and profits split with Colombian drug leaders who contracted with him to fly cocaine from secret South America airstrips to similar landing spots in Mexico.

The drugs were then smuggled across the Mexico-U.S. border to Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, Martínez said.